Tuesday, October 11, 2022

U.S. v. Saelee (9th Cir. - Oct. 11, 2022)

The most recent published Ninth Circuit opinions were from nearly a full week ago -- October 5 -- so, perhaps not surprisingly, we get a dump today of nearly a half dozen of them.

There's aren't a ton of lessons to be learned; some of the opinions are merely amendments. But one thing that this opinion might teach people is that if you feel like getting a ton of Ecstasy pills from Germany to the United States, simply mailing them there (in this case, to California) via the USPS doesn't really work so well. Because, well, the United States is somewhat familiar with that tactic, and screens for it.

Even if you use fake names on both the shipper and recipient side. You still get busted.

I'll also add that it's interesting that, in preparing the search warrant, the Homeland Security agent here repeatedly misspelled the name of the drug. It's a complicated spelling, to be sure. But it's Ecstasy. Not Ectsasy.